Prof. Michael Lin

How science works according to Nobel Prize winner Thomas Südhof: Very often, politicians think that you can tell scientists what they’re supposed to discover. You can’t! Scientists don’t know what they are going to discover. They have to try things. They have to have curiosity and ideas, but they also have to have the knowledge to try things. Very often, it leads to nothing; it’s a waste. But we didn’t know when we started it’s a waste. But when something does work. When something clicks, it is exciting and rewarding but it’s never just one click. You get a result on it, you’re hopeful, you build on it. Maybe it’s confirmed you’re even more hopeful. So it’s an incremental process. It is never one thing - boom we discovered a major thing, my god this is it. It is more like walking up a flight of stairs where each step counts and the higher up the stairs you go the better you can see what’s on top and become excited about what’s there and how you can use.

@soyonhonglab @Ger_Crowley13 Correct URL science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

Thrilled to share: we show that neuronal hyperactivity drives C1q-mediated synapse loss via brain-recruited B cell/IgM, showing unexpected neuroimmune crosstalk in adult brain. CONGRATS to @Ger_Crowley13 who led w/ resilience & creativity & whole team! science.org/doi/10.1126/

@anshulkundaje A good time to remember that computer science is not science, and so computer scientists are not scientists. Even if some of them call themselves that. linkedin.com/posts/alvinfsc…

I haven't dismissed any "promising" "ambitious" directions. 1. Using buzzwords does not imply that the work is ambitious. 2. Words have meaning. You can't describe A as B, when A is clearly not B. 3. Usually in science you make a claim when you actually show evidence.

I was fortunate enough to hear Feynman on several occasions. First, he made it point to go with the Caltech freshman class to orientation on Catalina Island every year, where he would mingle with all of us. Second, he held an informal "class" called Physics X, which only undergrads could attend, and which consisted solely of him answering any physics question posed by those in attendance. He was the first to show me that professors are ordinary people too, and can be kind, warm, and passionate as well as brilliant. Feynman is one of those few larger than life figures who absolutely deserves their reputation.

Cool idea and great bacronym: G protein-coupled Receptors Activated by Non-Prescription Agents (GRANPAs)

The 2025 Nobel Laureate leaves UC Berkeley for China. (Please read this post carefully) This follows announcements (public & private) of other high-profile professors moving from top places like MIT, U. Chicago, Yale, to Asia. I moved countries myself and know a lot of professors who’ve done the same. There are many reasons why we do it. But… 📍FUNDING is often the major reason for mid-to-late career scientists, from my observation. 1️⃣ Academia in the United States is built on high competition. There’s almost no free money. You always have to prove your ideas are worth it. On average, it makes science better. But at the individual level, it drives people up the wall. Not everyone is wired for constant competition, rejections and seeing their dreams put on hold. 2️⃣ In some European and Asian institutions, there is BASE FUNDING. You can use it for almost whatever you want. You can buy equipment. You can hire. You can travel. Whatever you wish. And it comes “for free”. No application required. It’s often annual and part of your employment package. It may be really big, or it may be small (e.g. for a couple of PhD students). For example - Max Planck Institutes are well known for it. The Director position at MPI (basically, a lab head) is a dream for many professors at regular universities. I know people from Harvard who immediately accepted such positions when they received offers. You have enormous resources at Max Planck compared to other places. So, when a professor sees an opportunity like that…. When you’re offered tens of millions of dollars that will let you focus on realizing your dreams and do big projects… It may be hard to resist. Very hard. 📍 Is it a loss for the country? In my view, research by one professor usually has limited impact by itself. But their REAL impact is the mentees and graduates who grow to become top experts in their domains, who will become professors, tech entrepreneurs, policy makers, and so on. And this becomes a real societal loss. 📍 What it all shows (in my experience): Without base funding, without concentrated non-competitive funding, the US will continue to lose talent, mentors and research leaders. The US needs base funding. Either mission-directed or in the Max Planck Institute (MPI) style. National labs often have less competitive funding. But it’s still far from MPI. And universities rarely give anything for free. Unless you get a counter-offer from a competitor, they won’t lift a finger to support you with internal resources. Integration of base funding into the US system is really tricky but long overdue. (It’s my opinion. Based on observations and private communications.)

This nature.com/articles/s4158… is a very troublesome paper. Either human embryos are totally different from other mammals, or there is a problem with the specimen 🧵

Our new paper is out in Nature, congrats to Sonja et al.! An excellent collab with Irina Dudanova's group. We promoted neuroplasticity to improve behavior in a mouse model of a neurodegenerative disease. nature.com/articles/s4158…

Proud to say Connie was my PhD academic (non-research) advisor. Maybe only met 2 or 3 times, but it was enough to make a lasting impression and motivate me to do research curiously, carefully, and deeply. It's not the favored style on X, but I'd never trade it for anything else.

Very excited for our new paper, now out in @CellCellPress! /🧵The protein Tau forms intracellular toxic tangles in neurons in Alzheimer’s disease and Tauopathies. Tau pathology slowly spreads from cell-to-cell but the mechanisms of Tau transmission are not clear. /1

Since the 1960s, the genetic code has been used to predict protein sequences from DNA and mRNA sequences.  Our @Nature article demonstrates that these predictions miss thousands of protein sequences present in human tissues. Across >1,000 human samples, we identified numerous abundant proteins whose amino acid sequences differ from those predicted by the genetic code. These proteins are not rare translation byproducts. They accumulate to thousands of copies per cell. Some are more abundant than the proteins predicted by the genetic code from the same transcripts. Their abundance reflects a combination of alternate RNA decoding mechanisms — including codon-anticodon mismatches, tRNA abundance, and RNA modifications — and selective stabilization of the resulting proteins. The last factor – protein stability – emerges as a major determinant of protein abundance across proteins, proteoforms and cell types: #Proteostasis" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">slavovlab.net/research.htm#P… Alternate RNA decoding is pervasive across functional groups of proteins, healthy and diseased tissues. It affects proteins playing key roles in neurodegeneration, and some alternately decoded proteins show strong enrichment in tumors compared to their surrounding tissues. This discovery has been a long and exhilarating journey with Shira Tsour and the @slavovLab team. It started in 2019 and proceeded through many challenges and thrilling highs. A journey that has opened new perspectives that we long to explore! 1/

Excited to share our first red ACh sensor! We developed GRAB_rACh1h, the first genetically encoded red fluorescent sensor for recording acetylcholine dynamics in vivo. （1/3）

Every word in this @drugmonkeyblog post is true and good

@anshulkundaje Yes wow an ML company that actually says you need to test their results

I am really digging this kind of frank presentation of very impressive results from a startup. More of this please. Budding scientists take note. You can do impressive stuff while highlighting important caveats. It creates more trust.

🍹Weekend project: I (with help from claude - budget $40), was able to get OpenFold3 weights running inside AlphaFold3 codebase (jax). Works for proteins, ligands, rna/dna (1/3)!

A terrific perspective from Ivan Dikic linkedin.com/feed/update/ur…)

Over the past two years, Genentech has laid off or lost Ira Mellman, Shannon Turley, and now Vishva Dixit! What is happening at Genentech?

🧵 Thrilled to share our new paper, just out in @NatureComms! 🎉 BTSP is known to rapidly form place cellsin hippocampal CA1 via plateau potentials. Here, we found that BTSP isn't just for spatial maps. It works for non-spatial information too! 🧠⬇️ 📄doi.org/10.1038/s41467…

✨Join us for GCNI seminars: 🗓 Date: June 25, 2026 🎤 Speaker: Prof. Andreas Schaefer - The Francis Crick Institute 🗓 Date: June 26, 2026 🎤 Speaker: Prof. Michael Lin - Stanford University Can’t wait to see you there! 🎉 lnkd.in/ep5YMBur